11/18/18 Report - $36,000,000 Marie Antoinette Pendant. Lucky Pennies and Coins. Great Mint Error Coin Database.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Diamond Peral Pendant Worth $36 Million.

What do you think it is worth?

Well Sotheby's, who you'd think would know a bit about such things, thought this pendant would bring between one and two million dollars at auction.  Boy were they wrong!

The item was described as exceptional and highly important natural pearl and diamond pendant, 18th century.  But there is more.  Set with an oval diamond supporting a diamond bow motif and a slightly baroque drop shaped natural pearl measuring approximately 15.90 x 18.35 x 25.85mm, hook and hinged back fitting, the pearl and diamond bow motif were suspended from Marie Antoinette’s three strand pearl necklace; the single stone oval diamond surmount formed the clasp of that same necklace...

That might add some value!  Something did.

Although bidding started off pretty much as expected, it didn't end as expected.  Someone paid over $36,000,000 dollars for it.  That is something like twenty times the auction estimate.

That, I guess, is what it is worth - for now at least.  It might change the next time it goes up for sale.

So why do I talk about things like this.  Are you going to find something that was owned by Marie Antoinette?  Probably not.  But it is possible that you might someday be lucky enough to find something once destined for Isabella Farnese.  Still, that isn't the primary reason I talk about such things.

The primary reason is that people often ask what something is worth.  It helps to know how to value items, and you can always learn a little about that by watching how things are sold and what price they bring.

So what are the determinants of the price in this case.  I suspect that the diamonds, pearls and workmanship had something to do with it, but I think there was a bigger factor - the provenance of once being owned and worn by Marie Antoinette was a huge factor.   But I'm sure there was even more to it than that.  One person thought for some reason it was worth that much and had the ability to pay for it.  At this point, I don't know why the winning bidder thought it was worth more than anybody else that participated in the auction.  That is something that maybe only they know.

Selling well is largely a matter of getting things in front of the people that most appreciate them, and in the case of very expensive items, also have the money to spend.

I've said this before, but one thing I like about selling items, although I haven't done it much, is getting the item to a home where it will be appreciated.

Here is the link for more about the pendant and other items auctioned from the Bourbon/Parma family.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/royal-jewels-bourbon-parma-family-ge1809/lot.12.html

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I've been talking a good bit about holed coins and lucky pennies and such things.  You've probably heard some variation of "Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long, you'll have good luck."  Some people say "If it is heads up, pick it up, but if it is heads down, leave it on the ground". A heads down penny is supposed to be bad luck, I guess.  It has also been said that a found penny should not be kept, but turned heads up and passed on to a friend or stranger.

In Ireland and parts of northern Europe it was said that pennies belonged to fairies or leprechauns, so when you found a lucky penny, you were to spit on it and throw it into the nearby bushes or foliage to return them to the creatures and receive good luck in return.

You've probably heard of the traditions of placing a coin under the cornerstone of a new building or under the mast of a ship.  I once found a 1909 penny when a house built in 1909 was torn down.  It was in mint condition except for a few scratches.  I think it could have been under the cornerstone of that house.

Here are some other superstitions having to do with pennies.

Carrying a penny for good luck.

Throwing a penny overboard  for safety when traveling by ship.

Keeping a jar of pennies in the kitchen for good luck.

Putting money in a wallet or purse given as a gift.  My grandmother always did that one.

Keeping a coin hidden in a baby's crib.

Putting a received penny in your pocket to attract more.

Coins with holes are especially lucky.

Tossing a penny with the idea that your worries will go with it.

Tossing a penny into a wishing well.

Keeping a penny in your shoe.   (Remember the penny loafers?)


I know that a lot of people will not pick up pennies on the street or when detected.  I will.  I always like to take them home and look for any mint errors or other interesting things I might be able to find on them.  I always check my change too.  Newly received change goes in one pocket so I can look at it when I get home.

I've found a few mint errors that way.  Some are significant enough to be registered on Wexler's coin error database.  Check it out.

http://cuds-on-coins.com/lincoln-cent-spike-heads-1990-1999/

Excellent database of mint error coins.

Pennies can be worth thousands of dollars.

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The surf on the Treasure Coast will be two to four feet today, slacking off for a few days.  There might be a nice increase in a week or so.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/16/17 Report - Small Gold Artifact Found. Gold King Mine Disaster. Shipwreck Wood on Beach. Two Tropical Disturbances.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Animas River After Gold King Mine Disaster.
Source: See Daily Signal link below

In August 2015, an EPA crew inexplicably dug out the rock and rubble “plug” to the long abandoned Gold King Mine, triggering a massive blowout that flooded the Animas River with 3 million gallons of acid mine drainage and, according to the EPA, over 550 tons of metals...

Click here to read more about that.

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Things have been going well down south.  The Dare recently recovered three silver coins on the trail of the Atocha.

The Magruder found a small gold artifact said to be a pendant.  It appears to be gold wire with a gold two-piece filigree bead and with a pearl near the end.  A similar one was found in 1985.

Here is a picture.

Small Gold Artifact Found by Margruder
Source: Personal email.

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Shipwreck Wood Washed Up on Beach.
Source: See Daily Astorian link below.

CANNON BEACH — What at first glance looks like one of the many logs that line Cannon Beach may be an uncovered keel of a boat from a possible shipwreck.

The wood object, which measures about 18 feet long and several hundred pounds, was found Wednesday afternoon on the beach close to the Taft Street access by Jeffrey Smith of Portland. Looking for a place to rest after walking with his wife, he noticed rusty square nails, notches and square cutouts in the log and decided to call the Cannon Beach History Center and Museum...

Here is the link for more of that story.

http://www.dailyastorian.com/Local_News/20170615/possible-shipwreck-debris-uncovered-in-cannon-beach

Cannon Beach!  Pay attention to place names.

Shipwreck wood occasionally washes up onto Treasure Coast beaches too.

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As I've been saying, "Its time to start watching for tropical weather."   There are two disturbances out there now.  Neither will likely affect the Treasure Coast much, but keep watching.

Source: MagicSeaWeed.com.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

8/24/16 Report - Storm Headed Towards Treasure Coast. 18th Century Shipwreck Appears On Beach. $100 Million Pearl Found.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Source: nola.com/hurricane

Tropical wave 99L has not yet become a cyclone, but has a 60 percent chance of doing so in the next 48 hours.  It is passing the West Indies and is still aimed at the Bahamas and the Treasure Coast.

Fiona has dissipated and Gaston is still strong but headed north into the Atlantic.

Surf Predictions From MagicSeaWeed

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Ship Reappears On Beach.
Source: TheGuardian.com (See link below).

The sifting sands of time come and go, each time with the possibility of revealing something new to the lucky souls who happen to pass by at the right time.

The remains shown above are thought to be those of the Sally, which ran aground on Devon beach in 1769 with a cargo of port wine.

Here is the link for more about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/aug/15/200-year-old-shipwreck-sally-emerge-from-water-devon-beach

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A 75 pound pearl found by a fisherman is estimated to be worth $100 million.

Click here to see the rest of the story.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

6/18/15 Report - Spanish Armada Wreck Uncovered. More T. C. Hurricane Damage Pics. Soup Treasure.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Cannon Recovered From Ship Of Spanish Armada
Source: UTV link on this site.

Spanish Armada ships were wrecked off the Sligo coast in 1588 as the crews made their way towards England to invade it.

The artefacts recently became exposed due to stormy weather off the west coast in the last two years. The Department were alerted to this in April 2015 after the local community and the Grange Armada Development Association reported that a large number of ship timbers were being washed ashore.

Dive surveys have been ongoing since then and an action plan was established to preserve the exposed material...

When was it that toredo eaten old shipweck wood was being washed up on some of our beaches?  Seems like a couple of years ago now.

I just looked it up.  It was longer than that.  It was 2011.  (See my 9/5/11 post, for example.)  It was longer than I thought  - nearly four years.

Here is the link for the article on the Spanish Armada article.

http://utv.ie/News/2015/06/17/Spanish-Armada-artefacts-retrieved-from-the-ocean-39279

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I often talk about the signs of treasure.  If you see really old wood being washed up, that can be a good sign of not only a nearby shipwreck, but also could indicate changed bottom conditions.  That wood could have been covered by sand, perhaps in the water, for a long time before it was uncovered and washed up onto the beach.

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Wabasso Picture

Mitch King sent these pictures o Wabasso beach as it looked after Hurricane Frances.

Mitch said, Then after Hurricane Jean, all of this was gone along with the bathrooms. 

That is a lot of erosion.

Thanks for the pictures Mitch.

Look under the pier in the second picture and you'll see how that was scooped out.





I've been asked what do conditions have to look like when there would be a 5 rating on my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale.  Well, this would be one example.  It wouldn't take that much though.

I think since I started with my beach conditions rating scale back in 2008 or whatever it was, I've only issued a 4 rating a very few times.  I'm sure we haven't had a 5 since then.

In fact it has been a very long time since we've had as much as a 2.  The past couple of years haven't been very good for finding older things, and that is an understatement.

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Yesterday's post did more than answer the question that was posed.  It also told you the type of things that will create really great beach detecting conditions, even if we don't have a hurricane.

The storm was stationary off our coast for days producing sustained gusts of 40 or so miles per hour hitting from the north/northeast, along with twenty foot swells.  All of that coincided with unusually high tides.

If you read that NOAA report carefully enough, you can actually learn more about the meteorology of it all.

I hope somebody will send me some pictures of the beach after the Thanksgiving Storm of 1984.

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Remember the myth, “Be careful eating clam chowder, you may bite into a pearl”? In this case it’s true and it’s a rare quahog pearl. They are so rare only four are known to have been found since 2002 and all were found while eating or cleaning clams. A fifth pearl was sold in 2015 but had been found a few years before in a bowl of chowder. The quahog pearls are lavender and lustrous and big enough to mount in a ring. They finally sold it to a Japanese collector for $16,500. The pearls are so rare it was difficult to set a value. This is the first price we have seen.
Source: Latest KovelsKomments.
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Not too long ago I called for the start of the Environmental Metal Detecting Movement and today I read that the Pope said the earth is becoming a garbage dump.  If you are a detectorist you are probably more aware of the garbage spread covering the earth than most people.  Most people don't see all of be buried pull tabs, sinkers, fish hooks, beer cans etc.  If the recovery of jewelry, artifacts and money were not enough, removing a little trash each time you detect will be help clean up our beaches and improve the environment.  As I've pointed out before, a lot of the junk can be recycled and turned into cash, including thins such as aluminum and lead.  Returning coins to circulation also saves U. S. dollars.  While I don't want to dwell on this point, I think we'd be wise for the metal detecting community to publicize the many hidden benefits of the metal detecting hobby.

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In the forecast for the Treasure Coast I see nothing but a one foot surf predicted well into next week.  South winds bringing us more warm air too.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/24/14 How To Detect Fake Bullion Coins, Another Gold Ring & 18th Century Spanish Colonial Platinum

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Gold Diamond and Pearl Ring.

As I've been showing, there are some holes that continue to produce gold along the Treasure Coast.  Old finds on the beach are rare now though.  This ring came from one hole that has been producing on a regular basis.

Today was a good day to get down low on the beach.



Whether you have found or bought bullion coins you should know that for bullion coins, like virtually everything else of value, there are fakes or counterfeits.  I found the following linked web site for bullion coin collectors that makes a clear distinction between fakes and copies.  According to their definitions, fakes are made of the wrong metal while copies are made of the correct metals.

A fake silver bullion coin, for example, might be made of silver-plated copper, while a copy of the same coin would be made of he correct purity of silver.

Copies are therefor made when the value of the coin is considerable greater than its melt value, such as with rare coins.

Here is the link to that article.  http://rscott.org/bullion/counter.htm

The article also explains that gold and platinum are very dense metals, and fake bullion coins are usually made of lighter metals, therefore the fake coin will usually be either too light or too big.  That makes it fairly easy to detect fake gold or platinum bullion coins.

Here is a list of some known fake bullion coins as described in the above linked article.

Silver Pandas. Around 2005, fake pandas started being distributed, apparently from China, and apparently made out of silver-plated copper.

2002 1/10 oz platinum eagle. This fake coin was made of a copper-colored alloy, with a white platinum colored coating, and is lighter than a genuine coin (2.13g versus 3.112g).  

Canadian Maples. There are likely many counterfeit Canadian maples, probably all fakes (wrong metal), but most likely all the 1oz size.

Krugerrands. There are likely many counterfeit Krugerrands, probably all fakes (wrong metal), but most likely all the 1oz size.

1994 Australian Nuggets/Koalas. These are actually replicas that were created for Monex to show what the coins look like. They appear nearly identical to the genuine coin (even the hard plastic holder is nearly identical), except the reverse is blank. It is believed that only 1 oz and larger (10 oz and 1 kilogram) sizes were made.


There is a device that will help you check bullion coins such as those listed above.  It is called a "Fische."   Here is a link where you can learn more about that.

http://www.thefisch.com/index.html?content=home



If you've been reading this blog you know that I recently discovered a series journal articles that describes what appears to be the earliest discovery and refinement of platinum.  Documentation from the Archives of the Indies talks about early attempts to separate and refine platinum at the Bogota mint by assayer Sanchez in the first third of the 18th Century.

At first platinum was considered nothing other than a nuisance.  However before long they had learned to refine platinum into a malleable form and were able to manufacture items made of platinum.  Apparently the first refinement of platinum was actually an alloy.

One of the first "uses" of platinum was to debase gold and cobs.  It was easier to overlook some of the inexpensive metal than to remove it.

Those who had learned how to work platinum were told not to disclose their methods.   The king wanted Spain to have a monopoly on the new noble metal.

The king wanted platinum to be shipped to Spain but tried to keep the desirability of the metal from being discovered so that he could get it cheaply.  However, miners and others got the idea that it might have value since the king was not only wanting it but was willing to pay for this metal that was previously being tossed into the river or otherwise discarded.  They illegally stockpiled the metal and the price increased.

Several orders of platinum were requested and sent to Spain via Cartegena during the 18th Century.  The first documented official shipment was in January of 1766.  Some was shipped earlier.

Treasure clues can be found in this literature, including shipments, storage and disposal of the metal.  Specific locations are mentioned where platinum was dumped into rivers or valleys.

Below is a paragraph that illustrates the kinds of things you can learn from the historical articles published in various issues of Platinum Metals Review.

The success Chabaneau had achieved in producing malleable platinum in some quantity immediately prompted the Spanish government to order the Viceroy of New Granada - now Antonio Caballero y Gongora - to collect all the platinum he could obtain while keeping its new value a secret. About 150 pounds of native metal were shipped to Spain, this time the miners being paid two or three reales
a pound. Further shipments necessitated the price being raised to four reales a pound, and the authorities in Madrid recommended the importation of many more negro slaves to work the deposits and approved a scheme for the importa­tion of tools for sale to the workers in the hope of increasing output. In 1788 it was decreed that platinum was to be sold only to the crown and penalties were established for anyone detected in hoarding the metal. By the end of that year more than three thousand pounds of platinum had been despatched from the Chocó to Cartagena for shipment to Spain, but great quantities were still smuggled out.

And here is the link to one of a number of articles that I have found in the journal on the subject of early platinum separation and refinement in 18th Century.

http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/pdf/pmr-v38-i3-126-133.pdf

It is known that by the mid-18th century a few articles had been made of platinum.  I also feel rather certain that platinum could be found in gold coming from Bogota, some of it included unintentionally and some unintentionally.


The surf on the Treasure Coast is down around two feet today.  The tide is fairly flat.  The surf will be increasing tomorrow to up around three of four feet and staying that way for a while.

The wind seems mixed.  It will be from the North now and then but only for short times.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

4/7/12 Report - Rocks, Coins & Lost Colony

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Gold and Pearl Ring Beach Metal Detector Find.

This thin gold band got bent.  I've shown quarters and dimes that were bent at ninety degree angles before.  Items are exposed to a lot of force when buried under a lot of sand and rock under the front beach.


I received an email from Philip I., the seller of the eBay item that I showed yesterday, and he said the item was found inside a heavy crust and was told it is made of copper and bronze.


Not long ago I talked about how objects are moved by the waves, and despite what you might often hear, I stated that there are factors that are more important than weight in determining how an object is moved on a beach.  I also discussed density and specific gravity, which I consider to be more important than weight, but still there are other important factors.   Those other factors include the shape of the object, which I consider to be very important, surface characteristics, and other materials that are part of the object.

Concerning shape, solid spheres, unlike thin sheets, sink quickly to lower layers of sand and are not easily moved by the waves.  A thin gold sheet will be moved totally differently than a sphere of similar composition.   A thin gold sheet presents a lot of surface area for the waves to work against, while a gold sphere would not be as affected by the movement of water.  Of course a sphere or other shape that presents little resistance (such as a gold ring) would also sink into the sand more quickly.

You've undoubtedly seen rocks that were cast up on a beach.  You might have seen heavy rocks that appeared to heavy to be moved by the water.  Here is an article that explains how rocks weighing up to 78 tons were moved onto shore and over land by the sea.  Some people would think that impossible.   The following article gets into the dynamics of that. 

Here is the link.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120430164357.htm

Very informative article.  Very applicable to metal detecting.

When figuring out the distribution of objects on a beach, remember to take into account factors other than weight and density. 



Here is a great web site for finding values of US coins.  It presents a lot of great information.

http://www.coinstudy.com/

It appears that the Lost Colony has been found.  No one knew where the 16th century settlers moved to after leaving Roanoke Island until a reexamination of the 425 year-old Virginia Pars map revealed some clues.
Here is the link to that story
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/lost-colony-of-roanoke-re_n_1474199.html?icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D158325


Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Forecast and Conditions.

The wind is from the West and the seas flat.  The tide will be low around 3:30.   Conditions remain pretty much the same.   Still easy low tide and water hunting.

Seas will be slowly increasing up to about four feet on Wednesday.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide @comcast.net